Why transitions are important when creating an effective user interface.

January 20 2009

Frog design explores “motion” in a new issue of design mind magazine. Executive Creative Director Tjeerd Hoek explains why designing the space between moments is key to creating an engaging           user interface.

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The Science and Art of User Experience at Google

January 19 2009

 

This in an interesting presentation and peek inside google and how they approach User Experience.

Also explains a short history on how the interface was developed and conceived. link

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Remembering Switch!

January 17 2009
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Switch! was the Interactive Institute sponsored project that last year’s IxD1 class contributed to as part of the ethnography course that happens each spring at UID.

I found Ramia Mazé’s paper on the full Switch! project in the International Journal of Design with the final design interventions developed at the Interactive Institute.

Switch! Energy Ecologies in Everyday Life – PDF, HTML

IxD2: Maybe you’ll see (or imagine, at least) traces of our small contribution to the final results. Maybe!

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Fight stupidity and change the future

January 17 2009

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There’s a short interview with trend forecasters The Future Laboratory on Gestalten.tv where they share a bit of wisdom.

Watch it here.

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crEATe
, Eating, Design and Future Food, is a book they edited recently.

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An iPhone app for us!

January 15 2009

Nicholas Zambetti, a colleague here at IDEO just created a super nice and extremely simple iPhone app to help us, interaction designers, create graphics for the iPhone and test them on the pixel level real time.

liveview

Check it out! By the way, it’s free for the next days.

More information here.

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Man swipes prototype phones from Sony Ericsson

January 15 2009

I knew it!!!…I bet Sony Ericsson had an touch screen projector phone
waaay before anyone else in the market.

Now I know how all those Sony Ericsson protoypes end up on Ebay =).

Details are still a bit fuzzy on this one, but reports out of Sweden say that a 35-year-old map swiped a batch of prototype phones from Sony Ericsson’s Lund offices on Monday or Tuesday and was then promptly arrested on Wedneday after police discovered the prototypes, along with a hundred other phones, at his home. According to Sony Ericsson, the man was not an employee but had a “working relationship” with the company, and apparently used a pass card to gain entry to the building. Police also found a laptop with some unspecified contents at the man’s home, and say that the total value of the theft was about 750,000 kronor, or roughly $90,000

Here the link to the story.

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The future that, sadly, never was

January 12 2009

Open video project has a nice collection of videos from the past ACM CSCW, UIST, CHI and UBICOMP conferences. And a lot more interesting stuff. Remember kids: these videos are fair use, so you can rip them apart and have fun with previous interaction design oddities.

Link to Open Video

(scroll down for collections to get to the juicy bits)

Also, if you are ever in need of some stock footage. The Internet Archive is the place to go. Especially if you are into 50’s and 60’s educational films. Check out Prelinger Archives. All are public domain so you can use the material in your own videos freely.

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TED talk from Greg Lynn

January 11 2009

Greg Lynn talks about the mathematical roots of architecture — and how calculus and digital tools allow modern designers to move beyond the traditional building forms.

More TED talks are regularly published online. Here are some of the latest:
John Maeda: My journey in design, from tofu to RISD
Nicholas Negroponte: Bringing One Laptop per Child to Colombia
(by the way, an OLPC is on its way to UID for the Interaction Workshop)
Dan Gilbert: Exploring the frontiers of happiness
Benjamin Wallace: Does happiness have a price tag?

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Tilt-shift

January 10 2009

tilt-shift circus
What to make “miniature-like” photos? I do. You can do it yourself in Photoshop but if you are lazy like me there is a faster way. Just go to tilt-shiftmaker.

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Museum of Moving Image

January 8 2009

Somebody was looking for this. Now they are back with some excellent content.

http://www.movingimagesource.us/

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CCC videos

January 8 2009

CCC is like the badly behaving little sister of TED.

Some speeches are really, really interesting, some not.

Finding the videos is terribly hard, so here are some links to go look at.

First look at the info pages and then find the video matching to it. On the 24C3 information page there are also torrent links, which are great quality. Some of the speeches are in German, most in English though.

2005: 22C3

No info

2006: 23C3

Information on 23C3

2007: 24C3

Information on 24C3

2008: 25C3

Information on 25C3

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New storage units in the interaction workshop

January 8 2009

Camille bought all sorts of boxes and storage units so that we can try to get some sort of order inside the interaction workshop. Most notably, we so far have 6 “Personal project box[es]” so that we can just put all of our wires, Arduinos, Xbees and what not all in a unique and (kinda) safe place.

I guess that if people like that the School will gladly pay for extra ones. Tack Camille!

personal project boxes

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Dynamic Ferrofluid Sculpture: Organic Shape-changing Art Forms

January 8 2009

origamiwithree2clipboard02

FlurroFluid Video

More Info

http://www.organicui.org/?page_id=74

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2003/ferrofluid-0205.html

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(Italo-modernist) Graphic design 101

January 6 2009

For those of you still interested in that old, static and tree-eating medium called paper—or great design principles—here’s a pretty sweet little introductory book by Massimo Vignelli, the italo-american master of graphic design. Topics discussed are typography and book design, amongst others.

http://www.vignelli.com/canon.pdf

Found via Design Observer.

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makezine.tv

January 4 2009

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Make: is the DIY series for a new generation! It celebrates “Makers” – the inventors, artists, geeks and just plain everyday folks who mix new and old technology to create new-fangled marvels. The series encourages everyone to invent, revent, recycle, upcycle, and act up. Based on the popular Make magazine, each half-hour episode inspires millions to think, create, and, well, make.

http://makezine.tv, Episode guide
Airing on American Public Television, available also on YouTube, blip.tv, Vimeo and via iTunes

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